Groovy B.C. wedding a throwback to Woodstock ‘69

Fifty years after missing out on his dream of attending Woodstock, a White Rock man got to live out the long-awaited experience last Saturday, tie (dying) the knot with his fiancée on the golden anniversary of the famous music festival.

A righteous event that spun a counterculture movement into three days of “sex, drugs and rock n’ roll,” Woodstock 1969 still stands for many purists, including James Rockwell, as the Woodstock.

For five decades, anniversary concerts have been held around the globe, each one falling short of what the original music festival – held in mid-August on a dairy farm in Bethel, New York – brought (and meant) to the ‘flower power’ children of the ’60s.

That spirit of love and connectivity was celebrated in Crescent Beach over the weekend – exactly 50 years after the legendary event.

Rockwell, dressed in a ‘Beatles’ wig – and looking as if he just walked up to the ticket-booth at Woodstock (before the fences were kicked down by hordes of unexpected people) – exchanged rings with Lidia Klimek, who wore a groovy teal dress with knee-high white boots and held a bouquet of sunflowers, at Blackie Spit on Aug. 17.

“We celebrated the wedding in a Woodstock fashion. We called it a Love-In,” Rockwell told Peace Arch News, adding that their themed wedding received total buy-in from their guests.

About 35 people turned up to the ceremony – each person dressed in more ‘shagadelic’ fashion than the last.